AI Delivery Leader (SM / Asso. Dir)

Senior Manager / Associate Director –
Operations & AI Delivery

Location: Pune

Ability to work with global customers and
overlap with US business hours as needed.

Experience: 12–18+ Years

About Aligned Automation

At Aligned Automation, we live by our "Better
Together" philosophy to build a better world. As a strategic service
provider to Fortune 500 companies, we help digitize enterprise operations and
drive impactful business strategies. Our purpose goes beyond projects—we strive
to deliver meaningful, sustainable change that shapes a more optimistic and
equitable future.

Our culture is deeply rooted in
our 4Cs—Care, Courage, Curiosity,
and Collaboration—ensuring that each employee is empowered to grow,
innovate, and thrive in an inclusive workplace.

About the Role

We are looking for a highly capable, hands-on, and
customer-focused leader to drive AI-led digital transformation and delivery
operations for strategic global customers, primarily within the high-tech
industry vertical.

This role is specifically meant for a strong AI/ML and
technology leader who has evolved from a deeply hands-on engineering,
analytics, data science, or AI solutioning background into a broader delivery
and transformation leadership role.

The ideal candidate must have prior hands-on experience
designing, building, deploying, operationalizing, and scaling AI/ML and
analytics solutions in enterprise environments, and should be capable of
directly leading AI engineers, data scientists, architects, and
multidisciplinary transformation teams.

This is not a coordination or program management role. We
are looking for a leader who can comfortably operate across:

• AI
  strategy and solutioning
  
• Technical
  architecture and engineering discussions
  
• Delivery
  execution and governance
  
• Customer
  transformation consulting
  
• Operations
  leadership
  
• Team
  and capability building
  
• Presales
  and account growth
  

The individual will lead one or multiple customer
engagements focused on AI-enabled operational transformation across customer
support, aftermarket services, service operations, field support, service
supply chain, and enterprise operations domains.

Key Responsibilities

AI & Data Science Leadership

• Act
  as the overall AI and transformation delivery leader across customer
  engagements.
  
• Lead
  and guide teams comprising:
  
• AI
  Engineers
  
• Data
  Scientists
  
• ML
  Engineers
  
• Data
  Engineers
  
• GenAI
  Specialists
  
• Solution
  Architects
  
• Automation
  Engineers
  
• Analytics
  Consultants
  
• Operations
  SMEs
  
• Provide
  strong technical and functional leadership to AI and engineering teams,
  including solution direction, architecture guidance, prioritization, and
  technical governance.
  
• Drive
  design and implementation of scalable AI/ML and GenAI solutions for
  enterprise transformation use cases.
  
• Be
  capable of engaging deeply in:
  
• AI/ML
  model selection and design discussions
  
• GenAI
  and Agentic AI architectures
  
• Prompt
  engineering approaches
  
• AI
  orchestration frameworks
  
• Data
  engineering and data readiness
  
• Model
  deployment and operationalization
  
• MLOps
  and AI lifecycle management
  
• Monitoring,
  governance, and adoption frameworks
  
• Bring
  hands-on credibility from prior experience building and deploying
  enterprise AI/ML solutions.
  
• If
  required, be able to directly contribute to solutioning, architecture
  reviews, experimentation, prototyping, or hands-on problem solving on
  critical initiatives.
  

AI-Led Transformation Delivery

• Lead
  end-to-end delivery of AI-driven digital transformation programs for
  global high-tech customers.
  
• Drive
  initiatives involving:
  
• Generative
  AI (GenAI)
  
• Agentic
  AI
  
• Machine
  Learning solutions
  
• Intelligent
  automation
  
• Predictive
  and prescriptive analytics
  
• NLP
  and conversational AI
  
• AI-native
  workflows and operations
  
• Knowledge
  management modernization
  
• Workflow
  orchestration and optimization
  
• Translate
  ambiguous business challenges into scalable AI-enabled transformation
  solutions aligned to measurable business outcomes.
  
• Ensure
  successful execution across scope, quality, timelines, customer outcomes,
  and adoption.
  

Solutioning, Consulting & Technical
Architecture

• Engage
  with customer stakeholders to identify operational pain points and AI-led
  transformation opportunities.
  
• Participate
  in consulting workshops, discovery sessions, and transformation roadmap
  discussions.
  
• Drive
  AI solution conceptualization, high-level architecture discussions, and
  operating model design.
  
• Collaborate
  closely with engineering, platform, and AI teams to define scalable and
  pragmatic solution approaches.
  
• Bridge
  the gap between business operations teams and technical implementation
  teams.
  
• Bring
  strong systems thinking and structured problem-solving to complex
  operational and technology challenges.
  

Customer & Stakeholder Management

• Build
  trusted relationships with customer stakeholders across business,
  operations, transformation, analytics, and IT organizations.
  
• Drive
  executive governance reviews, transformation updates, and steering
  discussions.
  
• Manage
  customer expectations proactively while ensuring strong delivery quality
  and customer satisfaction.
  
• Handle
  complex delivery and stakeholder situations with ownership, maturity, and
  solution orientation.
  

Presales & Account Growth

• Support
  strategic presales and growth initiatives including:
  
• Proposal
  development
  
• RFP/RFI
  responses
  
• Solution
  design and estimation
  
• Client
  presentations and workshops
  
• AI
  transformation storytelling
  
• Value
  articulation and business case development
  
• Identify
  expansion and transformation opportunities within existing customer
  engagements.
  
• Contribute
  to development of reusable AI transformation offerings, frameworks,
  accelerators, and AI-native delivery assets.
  

Delivery Operations & Commercial Ownership

• Own
  delivery governance across one or multiple accounts/programs.
  
• Drive
  operational excellence across:
  
• Resource
  planning
  
• Team
  utilization
  
• Margin
  management
  
• Delivery
  forecasting
  
• Risk
  and dependency management
  
• Productivity
  and quality improvements
  
• Build
  scalable governance mechanisms, KPIs, and execution models balancing
  innovation with operational rigor.
  

Team Leadership & Capability Building

• Build,
  mentor, and scale high-performing AI, analytics, engineering, and
  transformation teams.
  
• Coach
  managers, consultants, engineers, analysts, and technical leads.
  
• Foster
  an AI-first, innovation-driven, and customer-centric culture.
  
• Support
  hiring, competency development, succession planning, and organizational AI
  capability building.
  
• Drive
  collaboration across delivery, AI, analytics, consulting, and engineering
  organizations.
  

Required Skills & Qualifications

Must Have

• 12–18+
  years of experience in IT Services, Digital Transformation, AI/ML
  Delivery, Analytics Consulting, or Technology Consulting environments.
  
• Strong
  foundational experience in AI/ML engineering, data science, analytics, or
  enterprise technology solutioning with progression into delivery and
  transformation leadership roles.
  
• Demonstrated
  hands-on experience in designing, building, deploying, and scaling
  enterprise AI/ML solutions.
  
• Strong
  practical understanding of:
  
• Generative
  AI
  
• Agentic
  AI frameworks
  
• Machine
  Learning lifecycle
  
• NLP
  and conversational AI
  
• AI
  orchestration frameworks
  
• MLOps
  and model operationalization
  
• Data
  engineering and analytics ecosystems
  
• Enterprise
  AI architectures
  
• Ability
  to directly lead and challenge AI engineers, data scientists, architects,
  and technical teams.
  
• Experience
  managing large-scale customer transformation programs and global delivery
  teams.
  
• Strong
  understanding of one or more domains:
  
• Customer
  support operations
  
• Service
  operations
  
• Service
  supply chain
  
• Aftermarket
  support
  
• Field
  services
  
• Contact
  center transformation
  
• Strong
  consulting, analytical, and structured problem-solving skills.
  
• Excellent
  customer communication and executive stakeholder management capabilities.
  
• Experience
  supporting presales, solutioning, proposal development, and account growth
  initiatives.
  
• Strong
  operational and commercial orientation including delivery governance,
  utilization, margins, and execution management.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience
  working with US-based high-tech customers.
  
• Exposure
  to cloud ecosystems, enterprise AI platforms, automation platforms, and
  modern data architectures.
  
• Familiarity
  with agile, product-centric, and AI-native delivery models.
  
• MBA
  or advanced degree in Operations, Technology, Analytics, Engineering,
  Computer Science, or related disciplines preferred.
  
• Relevant
  certifications in AI/ML, Cloud, Analytics, or Program Management are a
  plus.
  

Leadership Attributes

• Strong
  AI and technology depth with delivery leadership capability
  
• Ownership
  mindset and execution orientation
  
• Systems
  thinking and structured problem solving
  
• Customer
  empathy and relationship management
  
• Innovation-first
  mindset with practical execution focus
  
• Ability
  to simplify complexity
  
• Operational
  rigor and accountability
  
• Bias
  for action and continuous improvement
  
• Strong
  collaboration and people leadership skills
  

What Success Looks Like

• Successful
  delivery of AI-led transformation programs with measurable business
  impact.
  
• Strong
  customer satisfaction and long-term account growth.
  
• Scalable
  AI-enabled delivery and operational governance models.
  
• High-performing
  and engaged multidisciplinary teams.
  
• Increased
  adoption of AI-native ways of working across customer engagements.
  
• Contribution
  toward strategic organizational AI capability building and transformation
  growth.